The Keeper of the Door eBook

She leaned her head against him, feeling his vitality
as one feels the throb of an electric battery.

“Do you think God is angry with me, Nick?”
she said. “She wanted to go—­so
dreadfully.”

“God is never angry with any of us,” he
answered softly. “We are not big enough
for that. There, drink it, sweetheart! It
will do you good.”

She raised her two hands slowly, feeling as if they
were weighted with iron fetters. With flickering
eyes he watched her, in a fashion compelling though
physically he could not help. She lifted the cup
and drank.

The candlelight reeled and danced in her eyes.
Her dazed senses began to awake. “Nick!”
she exclaimed suddenly and sharply.

“Here, darling!” came his prompt reply.

She set down the empty cup, and clasped her hands
tightly together. “Nick!” she said
again, in a voice of rising distress.

His hand slid down and held hers. “What
is it, kiddie?”

She turned to him impulsively. “Oh, Nick,
I’ve made a great mistake—­a great
mistake! I ought not to have let her go alone.
She will be frightened. I should have gone with
her.”

And even as she wondered at the unwonted vehemence
of his speech, she knew that they were no longer alone.

Max came swiftly through the shadowy archway and moved
straight towards her. A white sling dangled from
his neck, but it was empty. She thought his hands
were clenched.

Scarcely knowing what she did, she rose to meet him,
forcing her rigid limbs into action. He came
to her; he took her by the shoulders.

“Olga,” he said, “how did this happen?”

She faced him, but even as she did so she was conscious
of an awful coldness overwhelming her, as though at
his touch her whole body had turned to ice. His
eyes looked straight into hers, searching her with
intolerable minuteness, probing her through and through.
And from those eyes she shrank in nameless terror;
for they were the eyes of her dream, green, ruthless,
terrible. He looked to her like a man whose will
might compel the dead.

For a long, long space he held her so, silent but
merciless. She did not attempt to resist him.
She felt that he had already forced his way past her
defences, that he was as it were dissecting and analyzing
her very soul. She had not answered his question,
but she knew that he would not repeat it. She
knew that he did not need an answer.

And then the coldness that bound her became by slow
degrees a numbness, paralyzing her faculties, extinguishing
all her powers. There arose a great uproar in
her brain, the swirl as of great waters engulfing her.
She raised her head with a desperate gesture.
She met the searching of his eyes, and goaded as it
were to self-defence, with the last of her strength,
she told him the simple truth.